Tag: Naval

Well, This is a Relief

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The Pentagon is ordering the USS Nimitz (CVN-68) to return to port from the Persian Gulf.

This marks a major deescalation with regard to Iran, and I am wondering if Trump was even informed of this in advance by the military:

The Pentagon has abruptly sent the aircraft carrier Nimitz home from the Middle East and Africa over the objections of top military advisers, marking a reversal of a weekslong muscle-flexing strategy aimed at deterring Iran from attacking American troops and diplomats in the Persian Gulf.

Officials said on Friday that the acting defense secretary, Christopher C. Miller, had ordered the redeployment of the ship in part as a “de-escalatory” signal to Tehran to avoid stumbling into a crisis in President Trump’s waning days in office. American intelligence reports indicate that Iran and its proxies may be preparing a strike as early as this weekend to avenge the death of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

Senior Pentagon officials said that Mr. Miller assessed that dispatching the Nimitz now, before the first anniversary this Sunday of General Suleimani’s death in an American drone strike in Iraq, could remove what Iranian hard-liners see as a provocation that justifies their threats against American military targets. Some analysts said the return of the Nimitz to its home port of Bremerton, Wash., was a welcome reduction in tensions between the two countries.

“If the Nimitz is departing, that could be because the Pentagon believes that the threat could subside somewhat,” said Michael P. Mulroy, the Pentagon’s former top Middle East policy official.

I really hope that the balloon does not go up in the next 2 weeks.

A Definition of Advancement That I Was Unfamiliar With

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I have to agree with the cartoonist, the fact that a woman is raining down death and destruction upon black and brown people throughout the world is not a cause for celebration, a better solution is to stop the bombing:

In a historic first, the Navy has recommended a female officer to command an aircraft carrier.

Capt. Amy Bauernschmidt is one of six officers recommended to command a nuclear-powered carrier in fiscal 2022. Also selected for the job were Capts. Colin Day, David Duff, Brent Gaut, David-Tavis Pollard and Craig Sicola.

Naval Air Forces did not respond to requests for comment from Bauernschmidt, or questions about when the captains will be assigned to carriers and what having a woman serving in this role will bring to the force.

Bauernschmidt has already broken barriers in her Navy career since leaving the Naval Academy in 1994. She became the first woman to serve as executive officer on a nuclear warship, the carrier Abraham Lincoln, in 2016.

The definitive word on this is Caitlin Johnstone’s essay, “Biden Will Have The Most Diverse, Intersectional Cabinet Of Mass Murderers Ever Assembled.”

It is not enough that women or minorities have an equal opportunity to oppress.  The oppression should stop.

H/t Naked Capitalism., both for the article and the cartoon.

Yeah, I had to Write About this One

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It turns out that many, if not most of the Soviet/Russian submarine incursions that occurred 1980s and 1990s were probably herring farts.

Anyone who knows me knows that I HAD to write about this, it juxtaposes my interest in thing military and things fart.

This story is me.

It’s perfectly feasible that in the 1980s a major diplomatic incident between nuclear superpowers could have been triggered by fish farts. In fact, Russia and Sweden nearly came to blows over this very thing. They just didn’t know it at the time. 

Before we move on to farts, first, some background. In 1981, a Soviet submarine ran aground on the south coast of Sweden, just 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) from a Swedish naval base. The Soviets claimed that they were forced into Swedish territory by severe distress, and later navigation errors, while Sweden saw it as proof that the then Soviet Union was infiltrating Swedish waters. It didn’t help that when Swedish officials secretly measured for radioactive materials using gamma-ray spectroscopy, they detected what they were 90 percent sure was uranium-23[sic, probably U-238] (used for cladding in nuclear weapons) inside the sub, indicating that it may be nuclear armed.

The submarine was returned to international waters, but the Swedish government remained alert, convinced that Russian subs could still be operating near their territory. Which is when they started to pick up elusive underwater signals and sounds. In 1982, several of Sweden’s subs, boats, and helicopters pursued one of these unidentified sources for a whole month, only to come up empty-handed.

………

But it was farts.

In 1996, Magnus Wahlberg, a professor at the University of Southern Denmark, became involved in the investigation of the strange signals.

………

He and a colleague began the task of figuring out what could be making bubbles on a scale that would make Sweden think it was dealing with a nuclear submarine.

“It turns out herring have a swim bladder… and this swim bladder is connected to the anal duct of the fish,” Wahlberg said. “It’s a very unique connection, only found in herring. So a herring can squeeze its swim bladder, and that way it can blurt out a small number of bubbles through the anal opening.”

In layman’s terms, they let one rip. Herrings swim in gigantic schools that can reach several square kilometers and up to 20 meters (65 feet) deep. When something near them frightens them – say, a hungry school of mackerel or a submarine on the lookout for Russian spies – they can generate a lot of gas.

………

The good news was that Sweden wasn’t under threat from Russia, the bad news was it had spent 10 years deploying its military in pursuit of fish farts. Since it figured out what was and wasn’t fish farts, there have been zero reports of hostile intruders in Swedish waters.

This story was literally made just for me.

What Happens When a Nakajima B5N “Kate” Drops an 800 KG Armor Piercing Bomb

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This looks like a picture of Pear Harbor on December 7, 1941


The deck and superstructure have been severely damaged


It appears that the heat from the fire may have damaged the hull

My bad, that’s not the aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attack, it is a fire on the Bonhomme Richard, and the ship appears to have been damaged beyond economic repair, notwithstanding claims to the US Navy that it is too soon to make that determination:

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday said Friday he is unsure if the Bonhomme Richard should be repaired after it was engulfed in flames and smoke in San Diego over five days this week.

Gilday, speaking during a press conference on Naval Base San Diego across from the damaged and listing ship, said they’re still assessing damage so it’s unclear if the ship will be repaired.

“The damage is extensive,” he said, adding but he is “100 percent confident” the defense industry can put the amphibious assault ship back out to sea.

“The question is should we make that investment into a 22-year-old ship,” he said.

Yeah, I think that the ship could be repaired, if it had to face the Kaigun to protect Midway Island in 4 weeks, but under any situation short of war, it would make no economic sense to repair the ship.

Not Good

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The amphibious assault ship (LHD) Bonhomme Richard is still burning in San Diego harbor.

Navy officials said Monday that the fire ravaging the amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richard for a second day has reached temperatures as high as 1,000 degrees, and it is still burning in various portions of the ship.

Smoke and fumes from the ship at San Diego Naval Base continued to pollute the skyline and air throughout San Diego. In an email Monday evening, a Naval Surface Forces spokeswoman said crews have made “significant progress” in the effort to save the ship.

Rear Adm. Philip Sobeck, the commander of Expeditionary Strike Group 3, said Monday that the fire is in the superstructure of the ship and its upper decks and that the ship’s forward mast has collapsed.

“There’s obviously burn damage all the way through the skin of the ship, and we are assessing that as we kind of go through each compartment,” he said. “Right now the priority is to get the fire out so that we can take a complete assessment.”


Basically a Helicopter Carrier

It should be noted that the Bonhomme Richard was at the end of a refit to allow it to accommodate the Marine Corps STOVL F-35B, and as a result, this capability will be missing from the the fleet for the foreseeable future:

The amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richard, which burned through the night while in port in San Diego, was at the tail end of two years of upgrades supporting the integration of the F-35B, according to Navy documents.

That means the Navy will now have fewer options to deploy the next-generation fighter in the Pacific.

The Navy awarded the $219 million modernization contract to General Dynamics, National Steel and Shipbuilding Co. in 2018, which had options for up to $250 million. Bonhomme Richard is one of four large-deck amphibs to have received the upgrades. The Boxer was announced earlier this year as the fifth big-deck to get the upgrades.

Experts said the loss of Bonhomme Richard, whether a total loss or just lost for extensive repairs, deals a significant blow to the Navy’s plans to have F-35Bs continually deployed in the Pacific. And with Monday’s announcement that the United States had formally rejected China’s claims about the South China Sea, any accompanying boost in naval presence could be slowed by the fire.

This is such a 2020 thing to have happened.

Speaking of Vaccine Efficacy………

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5 sailors on the USS Theodore Roosevelt who tested positive for Covid-19, were quarantined, recovered, and returned to service, have tested positive for Covid-19:

Five sailors who returned to the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt have tested positive for the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), said Navy spokesman Cmdr. Myers Vasquez.

The sailors had previously tested positive for the disease but they had spent more than two weeks in isolation, showed no symptoms for at least three days, and they all tested negative for the disease twice before being allowed back on the aircraft carrier, Vasquez said on Thursday.

“The five sailors developed influenza-like illness symptoms and executed their personal responsibility by reporting to medical for evaluation,” Vasquez said in a statement. “The sailors were immediately removed from the ship and placed back in isolation, their close contacts were mapped, and they are receiving the required medical care.”

Increasingly, there is evidence that, at best, any Covid-19 vaccine would be of VERY limited effectiveness, perhaps granting immunity for only a few weeks or a few months.

This is not good.

What a Sh%$ Show

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The Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) was a failure, largely because it hot swappable mission module system created an underarmored and under performing frigate, though they were rather speedy.

Well, now the Navy is trying to replace their latest failure with the FFG(X), which would replace the long serving Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate.

The problem is that, because of the inevitable mission creep, the cost and weight are completely out of line with a frigate.

They will be replacing the 4100 ton displacement Perry frigate with a 7400 ton ship, which continuing to procure the 9,700 ton Arleigh Burke class, only it’s supposed to be half the price.

Ships, much like hamburger, and purchased by the pound, so the navy’s promise of a relatively inexpensive ship was always a fools errand, but even so the original estimate of $940 million, which is a ripoff to begin with, since the FREMM from which it is derived costs about €600M ($650M), but it now appears that it will cost about $1.4B a ship.

This is insane and unsustainable:

The Navy truncated orders for its ill-fated Littoral Combat Ship because the small vessels were vulnerable to attack and too lightly armed. Now, a new report suggests that the frigate intended to replace it may cost 56% more than projected partly because it’s bigger.

The service projects that 18 of 20 new frigates will cost an average of $940 million each in inflation-adjusted dollars. The first two are estimated at about $1 billion each because of one-time costs.
relates to Big Navy Frigate Risks Oversized $1.4 Billion Cost Per Ship

But the Congressional Research Service alerted lawmakers this week to “a potential issue” worth reviewing: the accuracy of Navy cost estimates considering that “ships of the same general type and complexity that are built under similar production conditions” tend to have similar — and substantially higher — costs per ton of displacement.

CRS raised a warning because, at 7,400 tons, the frigate to be built in Wisconsin by a unit of Italy’s Fincantieri SpA is about three-fourths the size of an Arleigh Burke destroyer and carries many of the same weapons systems. The latest of the destroyers are estimated to cost $1.9 billion apiece.

That could put the cost for most of the frigates at as much as $1.47 billion each, “an increase of about 56%,” based on comparing their tonnage to the destroyers’, the research service said.

CRS suggested lawmakers ask the Navy the basis for “its view that the frigate — a ship about three-quarters as large” as the destroyer, with installed capabilities that are “in many cases” similar — “can be procured for about one-half the cost.”

It can’t, and it’s over priced, and they are demanding too much from the platform, and they making the ship even larger than the model from which it is derived, (The FREMM is about 6,400 tons) so it’s likely to end up costing more than the Burkes.

Cancel this now, and procure a frigate, and not a destroyer with a slightly smaller gun.

This is Gonna Get Interesting

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He was fired because his email embarrassed “Dear Leader” Trump, and anyone who does not think that the White House did not play a role in this is deluded, notwithstanding acting SecNav Modly’s falling on his sword.

I expect to see a significantly less subtle intervention from the Oval Office to prevent this:

The Navy is looking into whether it can reinstate Capt. Brett E. Crozier, who was removed from command of the carrier Theodore Roosevelt after he pleaded for more help fighting a novel coronavirus outbreak aboard his ship, Defense Department officials said on Wednesday.

Adm. Michael M. Gilday, the chief of naval operations, has indicated that he may reinstate Captain Crozier, who is viewed as a hero by his crew for putting their lives above his career, officials said.

“No final decisions have been made,” Cmdr. Nate Christensen, a spokesman for the admiral, said in a statement on Wednesday to The New York Times. Commander Christensen added that Admiral Gilday was reviewing the findings of a preliminary investigation into the events surrounding Captain Crozier’s removal.

But Admiral Gilday’s decision could be upended by President Trump, who has not been shy about intervening in military personnel cases. Only five months ago, Mr. Trump fired Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer for opposing the president’s intervention in support of a member of the Navy SEALs accused of murdering a wounded captive with a hunting knife during a deployment to Iraq in 2017.

Unfortunately, it seems likely that Crozier will be collateral damage in this conflict.

The Denials of White House Interference Ring False

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The Trump administration has removed captain Brett Crozier as commanding officer of the Theodore Roosevelt after a memo of the dire straits of the crew as a result of the Covid-19 outbreak on board leaked to the San Francisco Chronicle.

They are claiming that there was no White House involvement, which is 6 pounds of sh%$ in a 5 pound bag:

Navy leaders have relieved the captain of a U.S. aircraft carrier after a memo to military officials in which he pleaded for help with a coronavirus outbreak at sea was leaked to a newspaper.

Capt. Brett Crozier, the commanding officer of the USS Theodore Roosevelt, now at port in Guam, was relieved Thursday after superiors said they lost confidence in his ability to lead. The decision to remove him drew outrage from lawmakers and some relatives of crew members who backed the commander’s call for attention to the crisis.

Capt. Crozier had written a four-page memorandum recently demanding that superiors allow him to take the carrier to the port in Guam to offload sailors stricken with Covid-19. At least 114 of the vessel’s crew have tested positive for the new coronavirus.

“We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die,” Capt. Crozier wrote in his March 30 memo, which was reported by the San Francisco Chronicle. “If we do not act now, we are failing to properly take care of our most trusted asset—our sailors.”


………

The decision to remove the Roosevelt commander came as a surprise to some Navy leaders, who said their focus had been getting resources to the ship, defense officials said.

………

Mr. Trump briefly addressed Capt. Crozier’s dismissal during a White House briefing on the coronavirus pandemic on Thursday, denying the move was punishment for calling attention to the plight of the crew.

“I don’t agree with that at all,” Mr. Trump said. “Not even a little bit.”

Bullsh%$.

Of course this was a political move, and it came straight from the White House.

They are Keeping Sailors Confined to a Plague Ship

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It’s the USS Theodore Roosevelt, and its skipper is begging for its crew to be put ashore because of a Covid-19 outbreak:

The captain of a nuclear aircraft carrier with more than 100 sailors infected with the coronavirus pleaded Monday with U.S. Navy officials for resources to allow isolation of his entire crew and avoid possible deaths in a situation he described as quickly deteriorating.

The unusual plea from Capt. Brett Crozier, a Santa Rosa native, came in a letter obtained exclusively by The Chronicle and confirmed by a senior officer on board the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt, which has been docked in Guam following a COVID-19 outbreak among the crew of more than 4,000 less than a week ago.

“This will require a political solution but it is the right thing to do,” Crozier wrote. “We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die. If we do not act now, we are failing to properly take care of our most trusted asset — our Sailors.”

In the four-page letter to senior military officials, Crozier said only a small contingent of infected sailors have been off-boarded. Most of the crew remain aboard the ship, where following official guidelines for 14-day quarantines and social distancing is impossible.

………

Mark Cancian, a Marine colonel who served for 37 years before retiring, said that “the Navy has got to figure out how to do this right or else they can’t deploy the rest of the fleet. 

Indeed.

Remember the $400 Toilet Seat?

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Yes, it appears that our newest aircraft carriers, the Gerald Ford class, has another problem in addition to its advanced catapult system, advanced arresting gear, and advanced weapons elevators, it’s toilets do not work properly.

Pretty much every time that they attempted to make a technological great leap forward, it simply has not been able to work reliably:

New toilets on the Navy’s two newest aircraft carriers clog so frequently that the ships’ sewage systems must be cleaned periodically with specialized acids costing about $400,000 a flush, according to a new congressional audit outlining $130 billion in underestimated long-term maintenance costs.

The Navy isn’t sure the toilet systems on the USS Gerald R. Ford and the USS George H. W. Bush can withstand the demand without failing frequently, according to the watchdog agency’s report on service sustainment costs released Tuesday.

The new toilet, similar to what’s used on commercial aircraft, is experiencing “unexpected and frequent clogging of the system” so the “unplanned maintenance action” will be needed “for the entire service life of the ship,” the GAO said in the report requested by the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Although the costly toilets are illustrative of the problem, “we generally did not include these types of ongoing costs in our calculation” of the Navy’s looming sustainment bill, according to the report.

………

Overall, the Ford’s estimated lifetime operations and sustainment costs have grown to $123 billion from $77.3 billion, the most of six programs GAO evaluated.

“The Carrier toilet system is indicative of the kinds of issues we highlight in our report that are requiring more money, time, and effort to fix than originally anticipated due to a lack of adequate sustainment planning during the acquisition process,” said Shelby Oakley, a GAO director who manages the agency’s ship acquisition reviews

“The pipes are too narrow and when there are a bunch of sailors flushing the toilet at the same time, like in the morning, the suction doesn’t work,” said Oakley. “The Navy didn’t anticipate this problem.”

The US Navy has almost 250 years experience with handling how much sh%$ a sailor puts out, and they could not get this right.

Hell, even Princess Cruise line can make their toilets work.

This problem is not unique to the Navy though, when the B-2 originally deployed, there was no toilet (now they have a chamber pot), and they added a cot to the back of the cockpit so that pilots could deal with the rigors of missions that could exceed 24 hours.

How does the Pentagon, and the defense contractors, miss this crap?  (Pun intended)

Fail

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The US Navy publicly wants to expand its fleet to 350 ships, but the Littoral Combat Ship program is such a clusterf%$# that they are looking at retiring the first 4 ships of the class, despite the fact that they are only 6 years old:

The US Navy is looking to retire the first of four littoral combat ships, despite being just over half a decade old.

Despite a push to reach 335 ships by 2030, the Navy is seemingly more than happy to ditch its LCS fleet, even though many of the ships have at least one to two decades of life left in them.

The ships are non-deployable and have been since they were initiated in the early 2000s. Since their inception, they have been plagued with developmental woes and quality control issues.

The Navy is currently looking to retire two LCSs from the Freedom class, as well as two from the Independence. Of these ships, the youngest is the USS Coronado, which is less than six years of age.

While a revolutionary concept surrounding the ability for a “modular” ship to fulfill many missions, the LCS program proved too much to juggle, particularly with expanding roles and design specs that kept changing.

The LCS has always been ill-conceived, undermanned, fragile, and undergunned.

It’s core feature was supposed to be swappable combat modules, but they never worked, and could never have worked overseas because of security issues.

Why a few dozen general officers have not been fired over this is beyond me.

The Navy’s Quest to Eliminate Sailors is a Threat to the National Security

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It turns out that the the collision between the USS John S. McCain Alnic MC in the Straits of in August 2017 was largely an artifact of the new navigation that the Navy had installed to reduce crewing.

This is not a surprise.  The US Navy has aggressively attempted to reduce crewing in an attempt to free up money for the latest and (not so much) greatest tech.

For example, the 16,000 ton Zumwalts have a crew of 175, (it was originally supposed to be less than 100), and the previous 9,000 ton Burke DDGs have a crew of 350.

The Zumwalts have nonfunctional guns, have suffered repeated breakdowns, and, given the parsimonious crewing, probably has a glass jaw.

And now, the Navy’s fetish has equipped the Arleigh Burke class destroyers, which work, albeit with a lot of sailors, are crippled by the automated steering system they have installed:

Dakota Bordeaux had rarely traveled outside his home state of Oklahoma before he joined the Navy in February 2017. He’d certainly never seen the ocean.

But only four months later, Bordeaux was standing at the helm of the USS John S. McCain, steering the 8,300-ton destroyer through the western Pacific. Part of the Navy’s famed 7th Fleet, the McCain was responsible for patrolling global hot spots, shadowing Chinese warships in the South China Sea and tracking North Korean missile launches.

It filled the high school graduate with pride.

“Not many people of my age can say, ‘Hey, I just drove a giant-ass battleship,’” said Bordeaux, 23.

………

To guide the McCain, Bordeaux relied upon a navigation system the Navy considered a triumph of technology and thrift. It featured slick black touch screens to operate the ship’s wheel and propellers. It knit together information from radars and digital maps. It would save money by requiring fewer sailors to safely steer the ship.

Bordeaux felt confident using the system to control the speed and heading of the ship. But there were many things he did not understand about the array of dials, arrows and data that filled the touch screen.

“There was actually a lot of functions on there that I had no clue what on earth they did,” Bordeaux said of the system.

………

A 19-year Navy veteran, Sanchez had watched as technicians replaced the ship’s traditional steering controls a year earlier with the new navigation system. Almost from the start, it caused him headaches. The system constantly indicated problems with steering. They were mostly false alarms, quickly fixed, but by March 2017, Sanchez’s engineers were calling the system “unstable,” with “multiple and cascading failures regularly.”

………

But a ProPublica examination shows that the Navy pursued prosecutions of the two men even as its investigators and those with the NTSB were learning that the navigation system, if it hadn’t technically malfunctioned, had played a critical role in the deadly outcome in the Pacific.

Its very design, investigators determined, left sailors dangerously vulnerable to making the kinds of operational mistakes that doomed the McCain. The Integrated Bridge and Navigation System, or IBNS, as it was known, was no technical marvel. It was a welter of buttons, gauges and software that, poorly understood and not surprisingly misused, helped guide 10 sailors to their deaths.

Despite its issues, the IBNS operated for years without major incident. Navy sailors did what they have always done: They found ways to make do with an imperfect technology.

The NTSB put it plainly: “The design of the John S McCain’s touch-screen steering and thrust control system,” the board found, “increased the likelihood of the operator errors that led to the collision.”

The Navy investigators, for their part, determined that the system’s “known vulnerabilities” and risks had not been “clearly communicated to the operators on ships with these systems.”

………

In the end, though, the Navy punished its own sailors for failing to master a flawed system that they had been inadequately trained on and that the Navy itself came to admit it did not fully understand.

………

The Navy has committed almost half a billion dollars to build the navigation system and install it on more than 60 destroyers by the end of the next decade — the entire fleet of the tough, stalwart warships that form the backbone of the modern Navy. Yet no one responsible for the development or deployment of the technology has faced any known consequences for the McCain disaster.

A number of current and former Navy officials remain convinced the navigation system should never have been put to use. And they worry about the Navy’s slow pace in installing a new, improved version.

“The IBNS has no place on the bridge of a U.S. destroyer,” said one former senior Navy officer with direct knowledge of the McCain accident. “It’s not designed to have the control that you need to navigate a warship.”

Seriously, our military is increasingly pursuing a path in which combat readiness is a distant second to procurement.

Also, as an aside, the article is a valuable story, but they have jammed it up with Javascript and HTML 5 animations and similar web-bling that it is difficult to read.

Whoever decided on the format needs a stern talking to.

Everyone at the Pentagon Needs to Read Superiority, by Arthur C. Clark

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The newest carrier in the US Navy, and the lead ship in the class, the USS Gerald Ford, has experiences many problems related to new technologies implemented on the ship.

First, it was the electromagnetic catapults, which are still missing performance and reliability goals, then it was the advanced arrester gear, and now it appears that the munitions elevators cannot deliver ordinance to the flight deck, meaning that the Ford is not even close to combat ready:

Only two of 11 elevators needed to lift munitions to the deck of the U.S. Navy’s new $13 billion aircraft carrier have been fully installed, according to a Navy veteran who serves on a key House committee.

“I don’t see an end in sight right now” to getting all the elevators working on the USS Gerald R. Ford, the costliest warship ever, Democratic Representative Elaine Luria of Virginia said in an interview. The ship was supposed to be delivered with the Advanced Weapons Elevators, which are moved by magnets rather than cables, working in May 2017.

It’s another setback for contractor Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc. — and for the Navy, which had said in December it planned to complete installation and testing of all 11 elevators before the Ford completed its post-delivery shakedown phase this month, with at least half certified for operation.

Instead, the shakedown phase has been extended to October and the vessel won’t have all the elevators fully installed — much less functioning — by then, according to Luria, a 20-year Navy surface warfare officer whose served on two aircraft carriers and as shore maintenance coordinator for a third.

“Essentially, the ship can’t deploy,” Luria said. “It can’t carry ammunition.” She said the Navy and Huntington Ingalls are trying to solve new problems with doors and hatches lining elevators shafts that don’t meet specifications.

Navy Secretary Richard Spencer said in January that he told President Donald Trump to fire him if the service couldn’t fix the weapons elevators by July. Instead, Trump praised the Ford as “phenomenal” on July 22.

The Ford’s Advanced Weapons Elevators are designed for the carrier’s crew to move as much as 24,000 pounds of ordnance at 150 feet-per-minute, up from the 10,500 pounds at 100 feet-per-minute on the older Nimitz-class carrier. That would increase by more than 30% the number of combat sorties that could launch from the carrier over 24 hours, according to the Navy.

The elevators aren’t the only issue plaguing the ship, which has had problems with two other core systems — the electromagnetic system to launch planes and the arresting gear to catch them when they land.

What can I say, but, “But I cannot be held responsible for my future actions if I am compelled any longer to share my cell with Professor Norden, late Chief of the Research Staff of my armed forces.”*

The Pentagon is going to innovate itself into oblivion.

*Seriously, just read the story, you can find it online.

They Need to Add Frickin’ Laser Beams Attached to Their Heads

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Thread: 1) During a military expo in Beijing, #China has unveiled Shark-styled underwater drones designed to carry out reconnaissance missions. pic.twitter.com/xDioOyQo3B

— IndoPacific_SCS_Info (@IndoPac_Info) July 28, 2019

China has created an underwater that looks like a shark.

I am sure that I am not the only one who’s initial response was to think of the movie,
Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery?

Because I cannot look at that shark drone, and not think that this something out of a parody of the James Bond films.

Of course, I always thought that they missed a joke with the Sea Bass:  At the time that Dr. Evil went into the deep freeze, there was no such thing as a Sea Bass, they were known as Patagonian Toothfish.

Just saying, “Patagonian Toothfish,” is funny.

Captain Putnam Browne is Not a Fool

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Donald Trump sent the Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) to the Persian Gulf to pressure Iran, but it is remaining outside of the Persian Gulf in Indian Ocean.

When you consider the restricted waters of the the Gulf this is a common sense move.

If the Lincoln were in the Gulf, the Iranians would know exactly where they are, and any attack would have a reaction time of a few minutes.

This guy is not painting a target on his back in order to promulgate John Bolton’s stiffy for regime change:

A U.S. aircraft carrier ordered by the White House to rapidly deploy to the Mideast over a perceived threat from Iran remains outside of the Persian Gulf, so far avoiding any confrontation with Iranian Revolutionary Guard forces amid efforts to deescalate tensions between Tehran and Washington.

Officers aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln repeatedly told The Associated Press on Monday they could respond rapidly to any regional threat from their position, at the time some 320 kilometers (200 miles) off the eastern coast of Oman in the Arabian Sea.

However, after decades of American aircraft carriers sailing through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which a third of all oil traded at sea passes, the U.S. Navy’s decision to keep the Lincoln away is striking.

“You don’t want to inadvertently escalate something,” Capt. Putnam Browne, the commanding officer of the Lincoln, told the AP.

Also, you know, the whole getting sunk thing.

Our Broken Military-Industrial Complex

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The Navy’s costliest warship, the $13 billion Gerald R. Ford, had 20 failures of its aircraft launch-and-landing systems during operations at sea, according to the Pentagon’s testing office.

The previously undisclosed failures with the electromagnetic systems made by General Atomics occurred during more than 740 at-sea trials since the aircraft carrier’s delivery in May 2017 despite praise from Navy officials of its growing combat capabilities. The Navy must pay to fix such flaws under a “cost-plus” development contract.

The new reliability issues add to doubts the carrier, designated as CVN-78, will meet its planned rate of combat sorties per 24 hours — the prime metric for any aircraft carrier — according to the annual report on major weapons from the Defense Department’s operational test office.

………

The launch-and-landing issue is separate from the ship’s lack of 11 functioning elevators to lift munitions from below deck, an issue that’s drawn scrutiny from Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican.

The Ford “will probably not achieve” its sortie rate requirement because of “unrealistic assumptions” that “ignore the effects of weather, aircraft emergencies, ship maneuvers and current air-wing composition on flight operations,” Robert Behler, the Pentagon’s director of operational testing, said in his assessment of the carrier, obtained by Bloomberg News.

………

Ten “critical failures” occurred during 747 at-sea catapults of jets; another 10 “operational mission failures” occurred during 763 shipboard landing attempts, according to the testing office’s report.

So, we are talking about a 1.5% failure rate for the technology.

This is not human error, this is a failure of the underlying technology, the catapult is performing about 6x worse than what is specified under contract, and the arrester gear is performing about 100x worse than is called for.

This is a hell of a way to run a f%$#ing railroad.

So Not Reassured

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“Helicopter Destroyer,” my ass!

I read this yesterday, December 7, and for some reason, I was not reassured at reports that the Japanese Navy will be reconstituting its aircraft carrier fleet:

The Japanese government announced on Nov. 27, 2018 that it plans to modify its two Izumo-class helicopter carriers to support F-35B Lightning II stealth fighters.

The announcement follows years of speculation that began even before Izumo commissioned into service in 2015.

“Since we are equipped with such vessels, it is desirable that we will use them for various purposes,” Japanese defense minister Takeshi Iwaya told reporters. “We would like to advance our research and studies on this.”

………

Japan’s post-war constitution forbids offensive military operations. For decades, the country’s leaders have interpreted the prohibition to mean the Japanese navy legally could not possess aircraft carriers.

The Japanese fleet sidestepped the carrier-ban by acquiring what it called “helicopter destroyers” — that is, surface warships with hangars and unusually large flight decks.

The Izumo class stretched the credibility of the “helicopter destroyer” moniker. The type lacks major weaponry. Its flight deck extends from stem to stern. It’s a carrier in everything but name. In practice, Izumo and sister ship Kaga, which commissioned in 2017, only have embarked helicopters.

Each 814 feet long and displacing 27,000 tons of water while fully loaded, Izumo and Kaga are small for carriers. The U.S. Navy’s supercarriers each are a thousand feet long and displace more than 100,000 tons. The Americans’ amphibious assault ships — which support helicopters, AV-8B Harrier jump jets and F-35s — are around 850 feet long and displace 41,000 tons.

Yep, nothing to see here, move along.

This Business Will Get out of Control. It Will Get out of Control and We’ll Be Lucky to Live through It.

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A Sh%$ Mess of Planes and Guns


Geography is a Bitch

Russia and the Ukraine are having confrontations over ship transits in the black sea, which has culminated in the Russians seizing 3 Ukrainian military vessels after a ramming, and a possible exchange of gunfire.

In response, the Ukrainian President is calling for martial law:

The Ukrainian president has proposed the imposition of martial law after Russian forces shot at and seized three Ukrainian navy vessels in the Black Sea, injuring six crew members according to Kiev, in a major escalation of tensions between the two countries.

On Monday, Ukrainian MPs will vote on whether to declare nationwide martial law in response to the attack following an emergency war cabinet held by the president, Petro Poroshenko. He said that the imposition of martial law would not imply a declaration of war and was only intended for defensive purposes.

The UN security council will also hold an emergency meeting on Monday about the incident following a request from Ukraine, the US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley confirmed.

Sunday was a day of rising tensions between Russia and Ukraine, with hostilities focusing on the Kerch strait, which connects the Sea of Azov with the Black Sea. Russia has constructed a $3.69bn (£2.7bn) bridge over the strait following its occupation of Crimea to link the Russian mainland and the peninsula. The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, officially opened the bridge in May.

The FSB, Russia’s principal security agency, said its patrol boats had seized three naval vessels from Ukraine and used weapons to make them stop, adding that the boats had entered its territorial waters illegally.

About the only thing that could make this worse is if the, “Very Serious People,” in the US foreign policy and defense establishments, aka, “The Blog,” decide that this should be a problem for them to fix.  (Which, of course, they will)

We are completely screwed.

Carrier of the Future, My Ass

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The USS Gerald R. Ford, the US Navy’s $13. Billion carrier of the future, does not have functioning bomb lifts, another “ground breaking” technology that they still have not gotten to work:

The $13 billion Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier, the U.S. Navy’s costliest warship, was delivered last year without elevators needed to lift bombs from below deck magazines for loading on fighter jets.

Previously undisclosed problems with the 11 elevators for the ship built by Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc. add to long-standing reliability and technical problems with two other core systems — the electromagnetic system to launch planes and the arresting gear to catch them when they land.

The Advanced Weapons Elevators, which are moved by magnets rather than cables, were supposed to be installed by the vessel’s original delivery date in May 2017. Instead, final installation was delayed by problems including four instances of unsafe “uncommanded movements” since 2015, according to the Navy.

While progress was being made on the carrier’s other flawed systems, the elevator is “our Achilles heel,” Navy Secretary Richard Spencer told reporters in August without providing details.

The elevator system is “just another example of the Navy pushing technology risk into design and construction — without fully demonstrating it,” said Shelby Oakley, a director with the U.S. Government Accountability Office who monitors Navy shipbuilding.

Gee, you think?

Every attempt at making a technological leap on the Ford class carrier has been problematic, whether it’s the catapults, arrestor gear, and now, the munitions lifts.

We’ve seen similar things with the LCS and the Zumwalt class destroyer, and it’s all driven by an almost pathological need to minimize crewing.

It’s a complete cluster-f%$#.